I often wonder if Palin was as bad as people said back then. I've tried to go back and watch old interviews and campaign stuff, but it was mostly the same blank campaign rhetoric as every other candidate. She did finish both her terms in probably the most difficult to govern state in the US (due to size, geography and temperature; although the federal gov does handle a lot of it).

I think the big moments everyone piled onto with her was the Katie Couric interview where she couldn't mention any magazine she reads (people used this to say she was unread, but maybe she didn't want to admit to only reading Cosmo/Glamour and couldn't think of anything else on the spot), and also when she prayed in Wasilla Assembly God that God would help fund an oil pipeline.

I wrote this back in 2008: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/hoping-for-the-apocalypse/